1981 Mercury Zephyr Z-7 Coupe review from North America

The transmission blew.

I have to rebuild the carburetor at least once a year.

The power steering pump locked up.

The rear suspension bushings and springs got really noisy when you hit bumps.

This has been an overall great car. It is identical to the Ford Fairmont Futura. The car was not one of Ford's better ideas though. It is hard to start in cold weather and takes a lot of gas to get started. Gets great gas mileage when its running though. The carburetor starts dumping too much gas in the engine and causes the spark plugs to foul, the only fix I found was to rebuild it.

This model of car was the first of the fox body cars, which is what a 79-93 Mustang was based on. A couple of weeks ago the transmission stopped going into reverse. So I am going to put a 302 and a 5 speed manual in to fix this problem. The straight six is a great reliable engine, but only puts out a whopping 92 horse power. So it's not much for performance. I don't have to drive any more because I bought a 1992 Chevy S-10 for $500 dollars. The people I bought it from thought the computer was fried, which would have cost around $1300 to fix, and all it was is a $100 ignition module. Now I could get $5000 out of it. Lesson: always make sure what the problem is before you sell for dirt. And the guy that buys it makes it gold for a cheap part.